


Sick Witch

by LadySheik



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/F, Fluff, MC is an OC, Original Character - Freeform, Sick Fic, Whump, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:00:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23015929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySheik/pseuds/LadySheik
Summary: Modern Magic AU Prompt from tumblr user shittyaus: I get a cold and when I’m sick I really can’t be around non-magic people but u show up at my door and I try to shoo you away but you come in and see my apartment but to my relief you think I’m just into some really weird crap, but then my cat starts talking and you notice some of my furniture is walking around the house and you swore you saw a plant wave at you.I would add a legit summary but honestly, that sums it up. Enjoy.
Relationships: Kang Jaehee/Main Character (Mystic Messenger)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	Sick Witch

**Author's Note:**

> Heyyyy what up kids.
> 
> I have nothing to say for myself. Have some Jaehee fluff, why don't you.

“Rory, are you sick?” Jaehee’s voice bubbles over with concern. Not that I blame her. My own voice sounds thick and tired, and my nose is most definitely stuffed – no amount of faking can disguise that.

“No, no, I’m fine,” I say with the odd accent that only congested people have. Those reassurances are completely undermined by the huge sniff that follows half a moment later. Damn it all. “It’s just a cold, I’ll be fine. But, uh, I’m obviously not going to be able to make it to the shop today. Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay! Let me tell the staff and I’ll be over shortly.” I can hear papers rustling in the background as Jaehee rummages around her desk.

“Over where?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

“To your place. I’ll bring food – do you have medicine?”

My stomach sinks as I look around my room from a nest made of pillows and comforters and quilts. It’s a mess, sure, but that’s not my main concern; I’m more worried about the various witch paraphernalia scattered around my one-bedroom studio apartment. Glass jars full of water and crystals sit on the windowsill, waiting for the full moon tonight. Candles perch on every surface. Herbs in various states of dryness hang from the ceiling in bundles. My athames sit in three mason jars in the corner by the sink, ranging from hunting knives to heirlooms passed down from my grandmother to box blades. On my desk, next to piles of spell books and my computer is my great uncle’s book of shadows. (Mine is an Evernote account. I have a separate email dedicated to it.)

The entire apartment is basically a chaotic tumblr witch aesthetic. There’s no way Jaehee can come over here when I’m like this. I close my eyes and lean back until my head hits the wall with a dull thunk.

“Jaehee, that is so sweet, but I’m really fine. I don’t want you to get sick – and besides, you should stay at the shop. What if there’s something the staff can’t handle?”

“I trust them,” Jaehee says soothingly. “They have some solid experience under their belts, and besides, they can use the practice. After all, I can’t be here all the time. I’m going to let you go now. I’ll be there shortly.”

She hangs up before I even have a chance to respond. I groan and fall over sideways, taking a portion of the blanket nest with me. Now I have to clean. Or at least make the witchy stuff less obvious. I lie there for a minute, wallowing in self-pity before I drag myself out of the nest of blankets and into a standing position.

I feel even worse standing up. My face is heavy and every one of my limbs is a deadweight. I start to shuffle to the desk.

Harold pops up from somewhere in the mess of blankets, blinking sleepily and yawning. When he’s finished stretching, the brown tabby squints at me with yellow eyes.

“You should be sleeping,” he says, without much concern.

“Yeah, well, we’re having an unexpected guest.” I begin stacking the books and turning them so their spines face the wall. I set an unobtrusive fiction book on top, hoping the paperback will discourage further inspection.

“Just lock the door.” Harold is nothing if not pragmatic. He curls back up into a ball, watching me intently.

“I’m not locking the door on Jaehee. All-Mother, Harold, she’s trying to help. We just-” I take a deep breath and steady myself on the desk, suddenly a little dizzy. “We just need to hold the place together until she leaves.”

The cat snorts. “Good luck with that. You’ve been living here for, what, three years? This entire apartment is permeated with magic.”

As he says that, the desk chair starts shifting towards me of its own accord until it’s nudging the backs of my knees. I take a reluctant seat, looking around the apartment.

“See?” Harold continues, oblivious to my rising panic and growing despair. “Even the furniture is starting to gain sentience.”

“It’s not sentient,” I snap. But I’m nitpicking – Harold is right. Normally, when there’s company, I can keep the magic reigned in and run an illusion – nothing too major, just a little something to disguise the worst of the oddities since there isn’t enough storage to hide it all. But in this state, there’s no way I’ll be able to manage that.

I make a gesture and mutter in Latin under my breath – cheesy and cliché, I know, but my mom is a big Latin fan and I’m a chip off the old block. A glass lifts off the drying rack and fills itself with water at the sink before gliding over to my hand. I take a few sips to calm myself and stay hydrated.

“What are you going to do about Jaehee?” Harold asks. His tail flicks back and forth.

I look around the room and sigh before standing up and shuffling back to my bed. “We’ll just have to hunker down and hope for the best.” I wiggle under the blankets and set the glass on the floor next to me. “Do me a favor and try to act like a cat, yeah?”

“Meow,” he says, pronouncing it exactly the way a human would. His voice is so monotone that it would be comedic if I wasn’t trying to be serious.

“Very funny, Harold. I mean it, though. Best behavior, you hear me?”

***

Jaehee knocks on the door, and I drag myself out of bed to unlock it and let her in. She breezes past me with her arms full of grocery bags. I stand at the door, holding a blanket around my shoulders like a cape and dressed in pajamas that I’ve been wearing for two days, while she heads into the kitchen in a very stylish blue dress and a scarf wrapped around her shoulders.

I shut the door behind her with a sigh and collapse on a chair that moves out from the table for me. I kick one of its legs but say nothing, instead praying to the All-Mother that she didn’t see. I’m in luck – she’s setting the bags on the counter and unloading them, only turning around to fiddle with the stove.

“I brought some medicine for you, and I’m making you some _samgyetang_ ,” she says, unwinding her scarf. I wince internally as she freezes and looks around the room, taking everything in.

“Sorry I didn’t clean,” I mutter, hoping to distract her. My head is pounding – a recent development that I gained from trying to maintain an illusion for more than a minute. 

It doesn’t work. I should have known better. Jaehee’s smarter than that. She takes it well though, hanging her scarf on a metal plant stand as she takes everything in.

“This is a lot of stuff! Where on earth do you put it all normally?” She bends over and picks up a small potted jade plant. It waves a single leaf at her, but stops in its tracks the minute I fix it with a withering glare. 

I wave my hand weakly. “Oh, you know… just clever storage techniques.”

Jaehee sets the plant back down, and I hope she thinks it was just the breeze. 

Harold walks in, and I stare daggers at him as he hops up on the counter and neatly arranges his feet. Jaehee gives him a tight smile and scratches him behind the ears. He rewards her with a purr, and I let out a deep breath that I had been holding. Maybe everything will be fine. 

We don’t talk much. I lay my head on the table, pillowed in my arms while she moves around the kitchen, humming snatches of songs that I don’t recognize as she works. The nice thing about being sick is that the magic permeating the apartment makes it very easy for me to take care of myself – unfortunately, that’s only a plus when I’m alone, because now, having spent the last two or three days tuning in to me and my cold, the apartment is doing everything in its power to make me more comfortable. 

Harold is holding up his end of the bargain, at least. After watching Jaehee for several minutes, he leaps from the counter to the table and lays down by my head. He may have a slightly caustic personality, but he does care for me and hates it when I’m sick. (He claims it’s boring to roast me when I can’t roast him back. It’s probably the closest he’ll ever get to openly declaring I matter to him.)

The rest of the apartment, though, is not even remotely complying with the whole secrecy thing. Several blankets are dragging themselves across the floor from my bed to the chair I’m sitting on. One has already climbed up the chair and settled on top of the blanket I already had on my shoulders. Two more are almost there. I hiss at them to stop under my breath, but they only freeze for a couple seconds before continuing their journey across the apartment. The bookshelf full of various herbs, flowers, and bottles of supplements gives a gentle shake every so often, making the glass and plastic containers clink and clack. I can tell it’s intended for Jaehee, as she’s the one cooking, but I don’t say anything, and she doesn’t appear to notice. Maybe she thinks it’s the windchimes hanging just inside the windows. 

The entire visit could have continued along this vein of me barely keeping everything in check and Jaehee being oblivious if the kitchen hadn’t gone bat-shit on us. 

See, the thing about the kitchen is that it’s very sensitive. It doesn’t like other people working in it. It took several months for it to warm up to me, and even then, it would only let me make simple meals. Of course, it now gets offended every time I order takeout. But I should have known better than to let Jaehee use the kitchen without me in it. 

I’m halfway between awake and asleep, or I would have noticed something was off with the kitchen’s energies. Harold, thank the All-Mother, is paying attention for me. 

I feel him stand and leap from the table to the counter. “Jaehee!”

At the sound of Harold’s voice, I whip up in a panic from the table to see Harold land on the counter and leap into the middle of the kitchen. Everything slows down: Jaehee is turning around with wide eyes, Harold is flying through the air, a frying pan comes loose from the hanging rack. 

Magic rushes into me as I stand up. I use it to move Jaehee back to the sink, tugging on her apron strings with a barked command, and extend the same spell to grab Harold by the scruff of his neck and drop him to the floor. Another sharp phrase focuses on the pan, and it drifts to the floor like a feather through the air. 

Once it lands, a heavy silence pervades the apartment. Jaehee looks from me to the pan to Harold and then back to me again, a stunned expression on her face. I’m bracing myself against the table, breath coming in harsh gasps. I’m dizzy and I’m hoping it will pass. 

Harold, fortunately, is on top of the situation. “Are you alright, Jaehee?” he asks. 

Jaehee looks down, which is how I know Harold trotted over to her. “You’re talking,” Jaehee says dumbly, still staring with wide eyes. 

I can feel Harold holding back his sigh. “Yes, I am. And I asked if you were alright.”

She looks at me. “Did you know your cat can talk?”

“I am right here, you know,” Harold says, sounding mildly offended. 

I open my mouth to respond, still fighting the dizziness and chills that are sweeping my body. “Yeah, I did.”

Then my vision goes blissfully dark. 

***

Waking up is a dreadfully unpleasant experience. I’m clammy all over, covered in sweat, and too hot and too cold at the same time. My stomach swims with nausea and I raise one hand to cover my eyes in a vain attempt to alleviate the headache stabbing the backs of my eyes and my sinuses.

Something cool touches my hand, and I remove it from my eyes. A wet cloth is laid over my forehead and temples. It’s a grounding feeling. I crack my eyes open.

Jaehee is sitting on the floor next to my bed. Her expression is pinched, and she’s fiddling with her hands – wringing them, rubbing them together, tapping her fingers. Everything short of biting her neatly trimmed nails. When she sees me looking at her, she smiles. It’s tight, but it’s a smile all the same.

I try to muster one up in return, but it comes out as a grimace. “Hi,” I croak, shifting under the blankets.

“Hello.” She takes a deep breath and looks at her hands. “So. Magic.”

“So,” I parrot back. “Magic.”

There’s a pause. Jaehee purses her lips, like she’s searching for the right words. She’s taking this surprisingly well. I’m impressed with her.

“Were you going to tell me?” she asks.

I blink. Maybe not as well as I thought. I sigh and turn my head so my cheek is resting on the pillow. Even under several blankets, I’m still cold, though the nausea is fading. “I- uh…”

“So you weren’t.” When Jaehee’s mad, she doesn’t yell. Instead, her face closes and her voice becomes monotone. It’s terrifying,

“I was!” I protest weakly. “I was.”

It’s not very convincing, and Jaehee raises an eyebrow.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then another. “I was. I was going to tell you. Just not yet.”

“If not now, Aurora, then when?” She’s frustrated, I can hear it in her voice, and I’m relieved.

“It’s not that simple. I can’t just drop a, ‘Hey, light of my day, love of my life, I’m a seventh-generation witch with a knack for divination and a natural talent for potions.’ That’s – you’d think I was crazy.” I shifted until I was laying on my side and let my eyes close.

“Seventh-generation?” Jaehee says.

I glance up at her, seeing the surprise written on her face, and I chuckle weakly. “It’s a family thing.”

“Oh.” She blinks, then shakes her head. “I guess… I just…”

“It’s a lot to take in.” I offer my hand after I extricate it from the blankets.

She takes it, running her thumb over my knuckles. “Harold left,” she says absently.

“He does that. He’ll be back.”

“He explained everything to me. Well, probably not everything.”

“Oh did he?” I say, closing my eyes again.

“He said you’re an idiot,” Jaehee continues fondly. “I believe his exact words were ‘Rory is a dumbass, but she loves you.’”

“He knows me so well.” My voice has dropped to a murmur. “You’re not mad?”

“I’m certainly irritated, but more at myself than you.” She laughs. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner. It’s so obvious.”

“I will take that as a testament to my skills.”

Jaehee leans down and removes the cloth to lay a soft kiss between my eyes. “Get some rest, okay? We’ll order some takeout when you wake up.”

“I love you.” It’s barely more than a slurred whisper on my sleepy tongue.

Jaehee puts the cloth back on my forehead. “I love you too.”


End file.
